Fake TV Show 'Extreme Zone' urges contestants to harm others: Are we really that cruel? (video)

"The Game of Death" producer Christophe Nick
explains the concept of torture on his documentary.
AP Photo

In the documentary “The Game of Death” French contestants on “Extreme Zone” are seen giving other contestants electrical shocks so strong that they were deadly. Although the “victims” are really actors in this study of human behavior, the punisher believes everything is real, and they do not hesitate to add voltage to win the game.

The French TV experiment which is examined in the TV documentary “The Game of Death” produced by Christophe Nick was based on the work of late psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram carried out his classic experiment at Yale University in the 1960s and found that when encouraged by an authority most people administer lethally dangerous electric shocks to a helpless victim.

Milgram's work and the made-for-TV experiment ask a question many people have considered after 20th-century genocides: Would I follow orders to inflict pain or kill another?

On the TV show, the game consisted of one participant asking questions to another player locked inside a booth with an electrode hooked up to his or her wrist. Any wrong answer meant the first player had to push a lever that subjected the victim in the booth to electrical charges up to 460 volts as punishment.

The audience applauded and chanted "Punishment! Punishment! Punishment!" when the contestant inside the booth answered wrong.

The victim contestant would then plead for mercy while the host urged the punisher to administer the charge. Approximately, eighty percent of those in power administered charges that would have been lethal.

What can we learn from this pseudo-experiment? We are all capable of enormous cruelty as well as enormous compassion. Perhaps it’s time we heed the words of the Dali Lama

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

That is the spiritual path taught at so many of our institutions and practiced by masses of people, yet we continue to be barraged by cruelty on TV and other media. Most people are nothing like those on the French show. Even the punishers who went all the way with the torture have a kind and compassionate heart, but we need to cultivate those habits rather than falling prey to mindless authority.

May we all be practitioners of kindness and compassion toward all beings rather than mindless followers

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